The Glass Age – Centuries in the Making, and Just Getting Started

The Glass Age – Centuries in the Making

Since ancient times, glass has been an indispensable part of human life.

In its most primitive forms, it has been a vessel for food and drink.

Glass panes secured in our walls have connected us to the outside world, while still protecting us from it.

As modern times unfolded, glass took its place in almost every aspect of our lives. Glass lanterns helped guide railroad cars through safe crossings. Teardrop-shaped bulbs lit up our world. Glass tubes brought radio, then television, to the masses.

And glass researchers kept discovering more remarkable properties of this once-humble material. By manipulating compositions and formation processes, they discovered groundbreaking new ways to solve highly technical problems with glass.

Glass now enables us to communicate globally over high-speed networks as pulses of light zoom through hair-thin strands. It brings vivid, lifelike images to the handheld screens we carry with us everywhere. It lays the foundation for new drug discovery, for faster semiconductors, for game-changing ways of manufacturing chemicals.

With nearly limitless combinations of elements, heat, and processing at their disposal, glass scientists and engineers are just getting started. They passionately believe – and are proving every day – that the greatest potential of glass has yet to be discovered.